The present disclosure relates in general to data processing systems, and in particular, to a method and a system for suspending and resuming multiple virtual machines executed simultaneously by hypervisors on data processing systems.
In virtualized computer systems it may be desirable in certain circumstances to suspend a virtual machine (VM) and resume it at a later time. In order to save resources concerning e.g. computing power, energy or memory it may also be worthwhile to suspend a virtual machine and resume it at a later time. Also, for example, changes to the VM's configuration file cannot be made while the VM is executing. In order to make such changes, the VM is first suspended. This causes the VM execution to halt and the VM's state to be serialized and written to a file, commonly known as a checkpoint file or a suspend file. After the VM is suspended, the desired change can be made to the VM's configuration file. The VM having the changed configuration can then be resumed from the saved state.